Brighter, full-colour electronic readers coming your way

London, Apr 30 (ANI): Buying an e-reader but not sure if you'd like reading the dim screen? Well, then get ready for e-book reading experience that will be as close to printed media as possible.

Scientists have announced, what is known as Electrofluidic Display Technology (EFD)- the first technology to electrically switch the appearance of pigments in a manner that provides visual brilliance equal to conventional printed media.

The work by an international collaboration of the University of Cincinnati, Sun Chemical, Polymer Vision and Gamma Dynamics, could offer better than 85 percent "white-state reflectance."

White-state reflectance is a performance level required for consumers to accept reflective display applications such as e-books, cell-phones and signage.

"If you compare this technology to what's been developed previously, there's no comparison. We're ahead by a wide margin in critical categories such as brightness, colour saturation and video speed," Nature quoted developer Jason Heikenfeld, assistant professor of electrical engineering in UC's College of Engineering, as saying.

The work on this technology has been underway for several years.

Heikenfeld said: "The ultimate reflective display would simply place the best colorants used by the printing industry directly beneath the front viewing substrate of a display.

"In our EFD pixels, we are able to hide or reveal colored pigment in a manner that is optically superior to the techniques used in electrowetting, electrophoretic and electrochromic displays."

Project partners at PolymerVision see strong potential for rollable displays, because the optically active layer can be less than 15 microns thick.

And it could be used in a wide range of products, including electronic windows and tuneable colour casings on portable electronics.

"This takes the Amazon Kindle, for example, which is black and white, and could make it full colour. So now you could take it from a niche product to a mainstream product," said Heikenfeld.

The details of the displays have been published in the paper 'Electrofluidic displays using Young-Laplace transposition of brilliant pigment dispersions'. (ANI)